Christmas, 2020

Christmas, 2020

This December, we’ve taken to having long walks both mornings and evenings, now that the quarantine has been semi-lifted. Our outside treks on the empty streets that meander around the city we live in are now something I look forward to, the way I used to look forward to taking my son out to eat or to the movies. These, among many other things are also respites from the past. Our routine is usually this: rise and shine at 6:00 AM, begin watching CNN, which I can hear fine while preparing our breakfast in the kitchen, bemoaning #45’s umpteenth denial that he lost the election the month before –  one of the channel’s favorite topics. My son and I usually eat from the coffee table, now ignoring CNN in favor of exchanging a few comments about what’s going on in the world and with each one of us. Then, while my son is doing the dishes, I go about getting dressed and making the beds.

I get 10 minutes’ free time and sometimes more on the sofa while my son puts on something warm and gets himself ready, and so I indulge in my new obsession with long loom knitting while I catch the end of the news. Thus far, I have knitted something like fourteen bufandas and I’m still going strong.

Before we’re out the door, one of us usually forgets our face masks; it’s become kind of a joke with us. The one who has forgotten to don the nondescript white filmy paper over nose and mouth receives a well-earned taunt. Something like, “Hey! What’ve you forgotten?” or “God, you have an ugly mouth!” We’ve learned to put extras in our jacket pockets so then, we begin our trek. Now that my son is on vacation from his online freshman year at the local university, we sometimes put in five miles, always in search for someplace we haven’t walked yet. We may talk, we may keep our silence, we usually remark about the way a building or house on the way has changed, but we always walk. Our silent times give me a chance to reflect on how much the relationship between my son and me has changed. Before the pandemic and quarantines, I had seriously been thinking of begging his father to take him in, not that I would have liked giving in. His father and I had divorced when my son was only 10 years old, and since then, my first and only and I had forged a stronger bond than we’d had when my husband had been around. But adolescence brought about what I’d sworn would never happen. My son had grown distant, had spent all hours with his friends to the point where I’d never know when he’d be home, he’d begun dressing shabbily and when I got the chance to see how his school grades had plummeted, I knew something had to be done. My father had stepped in without my needing to ask. In the forceful way he had been during my own teenage years, he demanded my son come stay with him in the next town over, and that’s what my son did. Although he still attended his last year of high school at the same school, he spent his off time at my dad’s, ate his meals there and spent the night. My son and I were apart for the better part of his second semester of 12^th grade. Although embarrassed at what I thought had been a failure on my part at raising a boy in the right way, my father’s plan worked. Over the months, my son grew into a more respectful teenager, student and outright human being. He came back home with my father’s blessing only a few weeks before the pandemic hit.

Now that both of us are more or less housebound, we find ourselves able to get along and be somewhat more like friends than single mother and almost grown-up son. And this is where we find ourselves during the pandemic that thus far has killed 320,000 Americans. Although we both have a healthy respect for what should be done to not catch the virus, I feel sort of immune. The hell we had both gone through in my son’s last year of high school makes me feel that I have paid my dues, so the virus won’t hit us. I know that seems strange, but it’s just the way I feel.

Today on our walk, we exchange a few words and then I get to think about the upcoming holiday. It will be our first Christmas without getting together with family. I have mixed feelings about this. Sending FB messages back and forth to my friends in place of visiting them, their complaints about not spending the holidays with family are palpable. But somehow, for me, it looms just like a fact to be dealt with instead of something to complain about. In fact, all of the pandemic has been like that for me. I have no more emotion to waste after my estrangement from my son, and so spending Christmas alone, him and I, without the yearly four-hour-long drive to my sister’s large house as does each part of our family, is actually a blessing in disguise.  That’s just how I feel today.  

Every single Christmas of my adult life has always been celebrated with a whirlwind of family and friends and always held in my sister’s rambling ranch house in a suburb centered in the southern portion of our state. My family would greet my son and me with real joy, squealing over how much my son had grown, peppering me with questions about how my teaching English was coming long this year, and then my son going off to play with his cousins while I could hear how the rest of the family was doing and help with the cooking. We would end up spending a week down there, sometimes more, and my responsibility as a single mom would be relieved for a short time. Spending the holiday with my family had always been a relief.

So on today’s trek, I am asking myself why I‘m not feeling the way my girlfriends are feeling, according to their FB messages.  Finally, this prompts me to ask my son, “Sweetheart, you’re gonna miss getting together at your aunt’s house, right?”

A shrug is the only thing I get from him, at first, but then he says, “You know, Mom? It’s all OK with me.”

The love I suddenly feel fills my heart, although, according to our new tentative behavior, I’m careful not to show it. Instead, I say, “That’s exactly how I feel.” We walk along, our breaths making fumes of fog in front of our mouths. We come upon our usual 7-11 at the end of the street and enter, always with face masks on, cleaning the bottoms of our tennis shoes on the black square mat on the floor, squirt a small amount of the gel provided and go for our usual coffee at the indoor kiosk in the middle of the store. The warmth of the paper cups cheers us up as we stand inside, away from the cold.

Holding the coffee cups, we navigate our way to the magazine section, gazing at newspapers announcing another upcoming red light, or shut down of our city once again.  Standing there, I feel my son’s shoulder lean against mine as we savor our coffee and the warmth inside the 7-11. And I suddenly realize why I won’t miss Christmas this year. It’s because I already have it.